OBU Virtues Symposium to Discuss Faith, Hope, Love

December 12, 2008

Oklahoma Baptist University's Faith and Disciplines Committee will sponsor its second-annual Transforming Virtues Symposium for the OBU community and guests in the spring of 2009. Transforming Virtues II: Faith, Hope, Love will be a week-long event, tentatively scheduled for March 2-6, 2009.

The committee's goal is to continue deep and productive conversations started during last spring's symposium while suggesting new directions related to OBU's identity and mission as a Christian university.

"The symposium is primarily for the OBU community, but we welcome anyone else to attend - people from the Shawnee community and faculty and students from sister colleges and universities," said Dr. Glenn Sanders, professor of history and chairman of OBU's Faith and Disciplines Committee.

The symposium will feature presentations by students and faculty members through the use of special lectures, class projects and other activities which will emphasize ways the virtues of faith, hope, and love relate to different disciplines and professional areas. Lectures will be given by Bible scholars and theologians on the definitions of the three virtues and practices associated with them. The symposium provides presenters and panels a chance to discuss how a classroom focus on virtues is important.

Other activities for the week include: a class project on economic development that treats hope as a serious resource for the alleviation of poverty; a demonstration of nursing practices that reflect love and hope as means of healing; a faculty panel discussion on academic freedom and the virtue of love; a forum on the virtue of hospitality as a model for interdisciplinary conversations; and a student-panel discussion on a student honor code as an exercise in all three virtues. A public presentation by an off-campus Christian ethicist also is planned. The presentation will focus on the practice of hope in a sinful world.